Mois : février 2016

You may have noticed in the news and Twitter and all over medias that the LIGO collaboration has detected gravitational waves. This is an undeniably amazing achievement, both technologically and scientifically. It echoes the fantastic detection of the Higgs boson some months ago in CERN.

These are big news for science, in times of a worldwide decline of scientific literacy and reason-based worldviews. These achievements must be spread and explained in classrooms.

Even better, these 2 detections represent not at all a revolution in physics, and that’s for the good! They both end the XXth century, as they both confirm, to the ultimate level (25 years for LIGO, and decades for the Higgs boson), that our 2 most successful theories of the world are… well, successful!

That’s it! XXth century over. You’re a young student on physics? That’s a good time to start the XXIst century!

The detection of the Higgs boson confirms the overalll validity of the so-called Standard Model of particle physics. The detection of gravtitational waves confirms the validity of Einstein’s General Relativity. One would be quite presomptuous to say where the next big discovery would occur. But my personal feeling is that it won’t come in these two fields…

So personaly, and as a general ethical position for a scientist, I wouldn’t look in these overwhelmingly crowded fields, but elsewhere. Wherever your personnal battle of intimate questions leads you. Enjoy the journey and tell the world!